bbrasmussen
Member
If anyone's interested, I posted a guide for scanning the Bountiful area talkgroups on UCAN. It's on the Utah Radio Wiki:
Bountiful PS Scanning Guide - UtahRadio
Having spent the past few years listening and tweaking, I've found this grouping of the talkgroups seems to work best when scanning the Bountiful area (whose dispatchers work Bountiful, Woods Cross, NSL, and W. Bountiful.) When I first started scanning, I downloaded the talkgroups straight from the RR database. This didn't make much sense for scanning. For example: the car to car channels for the four dispatched cities in the area are in the "Davis County - Other Talkgroups" section. I had these on a different system, so I could never figure out why I didn't hear any of these calls.
Another example is the South Davis Metro Fire Agency. They dispatch from Bountiful on the SDMFA Disp 1 TG and use Davis Ops 5, 6 or 7 depending on incident type. These TGs are under the "Davis County Talkgroups" section of the RR database not the "Davis County - Bountiful Talkgroups" section of the database. So again, I pulled these and moved them into my Bountiful system.
It seems a lot of people have trouble scanning UCAN because they're scanning too many sites and/or TGs, and come up with too much unrelated talk or too little talk because their scanner is chasing too many sites which may or may not be in range. I've found simplifying the scanlist to correspond to the local dispatch areas makes scanning a lot easier. In addition to pulling the Bountiful TGs and grouping them, I did the same thing for the Davis County Dispatch area as well as Layton and Clearfield. When things are quiet I can turn on one of the other areas, and when Bountiful is busy, I can turn them off by area and avoid missing calls from Bountiful.
I'm sure there are many opinions on the best ways to set up scanlists, and there are other ways that work well, but this seemed to work for me for Bountiful. Other areas could be set up similarly.
Bountiful PS Scanning Guide - UtahRadio
Having spent the past few years listening and tweaking, I've found this grouping of the talkgroups seems to work best when scanning the Bountiful area (whose dispatchers work Bountiful, Woods Cross, NSL, and W. Bountiful.) When I first started scanning, I downloaded the talkgroups straight from the RR database. This didn't make much sense for scanning. For example: the car to car channels for the four dispatched cities in the area are in the "Davis County - Other Talkgroups" section. I had these on a different system, so I could never figure out why I didn't hear any of these calls.
Another example is the South Davis Metro Fire Agency. They dispatch from Bountiful on the SDMFA Disp 1 TG and use Davis Ops 5, 6 or 7 depending on incident type. These TGs are under the "Davis County Talkgroups" section of the RR database not the "Davis County - Bountiful Talkgroups" section of the database. So again, I pulled these and moved them into my Bountiful system.
It seems a lot of people have trouble scanning UCAN because they're scanning too many sites and/or TGs, and come up with too much unrelated talk or too little talk because their scanner is chasing too many sites which may or may not be in range. I've found simplifying the scanlist to correspond to the local dispatch areas makes scanning a lot easier. In addition to pulling the Bountiful TGs and grouping them, I did the same thing for the Davis County Dispatch area as well as Layton and Clearfield. When things are quiet I can turn on one of the other areas, and when Bountiful is busy, I can turn them off by area and avoid missing calls from Bountiful.
I'm sure there are many opinions on the best ways to set up scanlists, and there are other ways that work well, but this seemed to work for me for Bountiful. Other areas could be set up similarly.
